


sweetly, before my mystery ends

by illinois_e



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, a bit angsty i guess, before the whole baltimore mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 21:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17433749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illinois_e/pseuds/illinois_e
Summary: Neil Josten’s days are ending. He knows this—knows that he has to die, like a phoenix, so a new boy can be born from his ashes; another boy to run and hide and fear. But Neil Josten does not want to go away, does not want to become just another old identity, useless, stashed away in some deep corner of the memory.Neil Josten isn’t like the others. He has a life, he has friends, he has a chance. He has Andrew, and their promise to honor. For the first time, he has a key—more than that, Neil Josten has a place to stay.





	sweetly, before my mystery ends

**Author's Note:**

> i guess i'll finish this series even if it takes me YEARS so here it is. im doing it for u @ sufjan stevens. also big thanks to my friend nalu (asiren @ ao3) who proofread this for me. love ya girl
> 
> ps: feel free to point any mistakes in the comments im glad to correct them
> 
> "so can we contend, peacefully  
> before my history ends?  
> jesus, i need you, be near me, come shield me  
> from fossils that fall on my head  
> there’s only a shadow of me; in a matter of speaking, i'm dead."
> 
> sufjan stevens — john my beloved

Deep inside, Neil knew he should be paying more attention to the messages.

It was something his mother made him learn very early on, even before they ran away, afraid that some enemy of Nathan’s might try to use his son to reach him. And to Mary, everything could be interpreted as a threatening sign: a person saying hi to them on the street, a phone call from a childhood lost friend, the neighbor asking for a cup of sugar. Suspicious messages marking the countdown to some date Neil couldn’t figure would be on the top of her list. Enough to make her throw the phone in the nearest toilet, change her name and background, and drag Neil halfway across the world.

But she was dead, and Neil had the luxury of not caring. It was just a matter of time until the Moriyamas got their claws on him again; or worse, before they released his father from whatever hellhole he was and led Nathan straight to him. A lifetime of suspicion and well spun lies had not saved Mary Hatford from the bullet lodged in her stomach, and Neil was sure it wouldn’t save him either. Not anymore.

He might as well just do the best with whatever time he had left, which meant playing exy until he felt he was ready to end the Ravens’ reign. And lately, spending his night hours at the rooftop of the Fox Tower whenever there wasn’t anybody around to notice him slipping away.

Andrew was there already, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The smell still reminded Neil of his mother, but she was the last thing he wanted to think about in that moment. Mary Hatford was Nathaniel Wesninski’s mother, and Andrew did not need to know him by that name. Or that life.

“How much?” he asked, in lieu of a greeting. They were past that already. In fact, seeing as the first time they met Andrew received him with a racket in the middle of his stomach, Neil dared to think they never needed them.

“94%, maybe,” he answered. The moonlight reflected on Andrew’s hair made it look more washed out than normal—like a halo, angel like. The memories from the last afternoon when they were alone at the dorm, however, were as far from angelic as Neil could imagine. “Depends on what you want here.”

“Nothing.” _If this is nothing, does this mean I want everything?_ “A smoke.”

Andrew flicked the stub of his cigarette down the roof and passed another to Neil, lighting it on his lips. “Definitely 94%. A smoke isn’t nothing.”

Neil wondered if the stars above laughed every time the percentage went up. Andrew playing hard to get with rules only he knew, and Neil humoring him the best he knew how.

“You’re right. _This_ is nothing.” When he made to give the cigarette back, Andrew didn’t raise his hand to catch it. The flicker shone bright red and went down against the concrete floor.

“Yes or no?”

“Guess me.”

Andrew looked like he was deathly close to getting up and leaving Neil to mull over his idiotic streak. “Answer it. Yes or no?”

“You already know it.” He said, raising his hand when Andrew made it to protest again. “Yes.”

When Andrew kissed him, it was as if he was taking all of Neil’s problems and throwing them out of the window, straight to a river that would carry them away, to a sea where they would get mixed with the problems of thousands other people until they became nothing. And someone who came to look wouldn’t be able to tell which problem belonged to each person, wouldn’t be able to see Neil Josten as more than a normal boy with a slightly troubled family who played exy so he could get a degree. No Chris, no Stefan, no Nathaniel. Nothing more and nothing less.

When Andrew kissed him, he was Neil Josten, with no murderous fathers and dead mothers past him. When Andrew’s tongue traced the ridges of his teeth, he couldn’t feel anything else, couldn’t think of anything else besides the non existing distance separating them.

They parted to breathe, and before Andrew could try to resume their kissing, Neil raised his hand and placed it as close as he could to Andrew’s face without touching him. “Yes or no?”

Andrew cocked his eyebrow, looking at Neil as if he was a hundred pieces puzzle he was only halfway to complete. “Yes.”

Neil smiled—the lack of light probably didn’t let Andrew grasp the full size of it, for which he was thankful. His fingers traced the sharp edges of Andrew’s jaw, feeling the smooth texture of a recently shaved beard. His fingers lingered over Andrew’s lips, shiny and slightly plump after their kiss, memorizing their exact shape.

“95% now,” Andrew said. If Neil didn’t believe him before, he would much less when Andrew raised his hand and covered Neil’s, pressing both firmly against his face, as if he too wanted to make sure Neil would never forget it.

Neil laughed. “I wonder what I need to do to reach 100%.”

Andrew moved Neil hand before his eyes, observing the small scars that crossed his fingers, results of the clumsiness characteristic of a six year old child, in a world where six year old children were taught how to hold a knife. He asked nothing—that was just another thing he would have to store for later, for the next one of their honesty games. Another one of Neil’s endless stream of secrets.

“Just stay and keep being stupid.”

Neil reached for the forgotten cigarette and lighted it on again before replying. “That’s the plan.”

Inside his pocket, the ancient flip phone flicked its light. 20.

(the clock is running.  _tick tock_ )

* * *

It was a rare thing to feel the silence in the Fox Tower; most times, there was always some sort of background noise, even when everyone seemed to be silent. Be it a shower running, a movie reproducing gunshot noises and screams, someone snoring loudly after two nights without sleep. Their peace could not be the conventional peace, the soundless one, not with so many people living so close to each other, fighting half of the time and grudgingly making amends in the other.

Neil’s pencil scratched the paper, writing words in Spanish he hoped he wouldn’t have to use anytime soon. Or maybe he did, if the alternative was dying and being buried in some unmarked ditch by the road going out of Baltimore. But he tried to think of that the least as he could. Instead, he focused on memorizing the details of Spanish syntax. Perhaps he should try Portuguese next—the grammar was close to the Spanish, and Brazil was a big country, where hopefully it would take years before someone found him. _Hopefully_ being the key word.

In the absent mindedness caused by being woke up by his alarm at 4AM to study, Neil was sitting at the kitchen table with his back turned to the front door. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear when the doorknob suddenly turned. His whole body tensed—his stash of money was stored in the safe box, inside the closet. There was no way he could reach it without waking up Matt. The only weapons there had in the kitchen were old, blunt knives. But if he used enough force, then, maybe—

He was already on his feet, reaching for the cutlery drawer when the door opened and Andrew slipped in. The small table lamp was enough for Neil to discern him by his size, and as he came closer to the table, Neil could see him fully, with the washed-out face and dark circles of someone who did not acquaint himself well with sleep that night.

“Oh,” he said, sitting down once again. His eyes focused on the familiar rock band print of the shirt Andrew used as his pajamas, trying to normalize his breathing. “It’s you.”

Andrew sat down in front of him—giving him space, most probably. Still, Neil would prefer to have him by his side.

“Looks like you were expecting someone else.”

“Forgive me for being scared by someone entering my room uninvited at 4AM.” His tone was acidic, but contrary to that, he filled two glasses with water, one for each, and put them both on the table. “That happens all the time.”

Andrew twirled the water on his glass without drinking it. He had that look in his eyes that let Neil know he was being seen right through his bullshit, even if nothing was being said on that. “I can leave, if you want.”

“No,” his fingers intertwined over his Spanish notes, so he would stop fidgeting with them. “I don’t.”

Andrew said nothing else, and soon Neil turned back to his papers, even if he couldn’t concentrate on them anymore, just to show Andrew that everything was fine and nice and normal, and there was no reason for any of them to feel scared. Not at all.

Once again, the only noise in the world was that is Neil’s pencil scratching the paper, occasionally coming to rest between his teeth whenever he forgot how to conjugate a certain verb. Who was the person that decided latin-derived languages had to be so confusing?

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the paper. From his peripheral vision he could see Andrew’s fingers, which were soundlessly tapping at the wood since a little after he came, stop at the question.

“Maybe I just want to watch you doing your homework. In Spanish.”

“Hey now,” he said, trying to fake offense and failing. “Are you mocking my choice of major?”

“Neil.”

“Okay, okay.” Neil put his pencil down between the pages and closed his notebook. “Can’t sleep? Because I can’t either. Tried for an hour or something before giving up. Figured that even Spanish syntax was better than lying in bed, looking at the ceiling.”

“And is it?” he asked. The fact that he deflected the previous question didn’t go unnoticed by Neil, who frowned but didn’t push it further.

“Well, it seemed so at the beginning, but now I’m starting to doubt it.”

Andrew gave him a half-smile — one more for Neil’s collection of memories, for the things that keep him steady on the days he’s worried about turning the computer on and finding out his father’s being released, or that the press finally cracked the mystery of Neil Josten — and reached for Neil’s notebook, closing it with a flick of his wrist. “Stop it, then.”

Neil knew he should at least put up a little fight—his grades weren’t really the best, since he spent all his free time watching videos of their adversaries’ matches with Kevin or devising highly complex flight plans for the day when his life — not his, _Neil Josten’s_ — would inevitably come tumbling down.

Because it would. It was just a matter of time, and that he knew well. The most his mother and him managed to stay out of his father’s radar was a year and a half, living in a far way rural community in Ireland, and that was because it was close enough to England that his uncle’s influence sufficed to keep their wellbeing, but only until it started to look like he was defying the Moriyamas. Then, they had to get back on the road again.

He sighed and put his hands on the table, palms up, and raised his eyebrow to Andrew like a question. “Yes or no?”

Andrew tsked. He looked at Neil’s hand for long seconds, and Neil remembered one of their last times on the roof, when Andrew’s expression betrayed his curiosity and the question about Neil’s scars could be felt in the air, in the tip of his tongue; and there it remained, unsaid. Neil waited for the moment when Andrew’s mouth would open and the question would come to life, thought about all the implications of telling the truth, of how close Andrew was coming to assembling the puzzle of Nathaniel Wesninski’s life.

But again, nothing came. The only thing that left Andrew’s mouth was a quiet, almost resigned _yes_ , and then his hands were over Neil’s hands, holding them loosely, almost like they weren’t there (but just enough for Neil to know that yes, they were).

“Spanish sucks, anyway,” he said, laying his head down on his extended arms, hands still linked with Andrew’s. _I could sleep just like this_ , he thought. Sitting in the most uncomfortable position in a hard wooden chair and with the table’s ridge pressed up against his ribs, but still, he was sure he could close his eyes and go back to dreamland, if only because Andrew was in front of him now, and that always made him feel safe, since the first time Andrew vowed to protect him.

“Don’t let Nicky hear you saying that.” Neil didn’t answer that, but Andrew could see a sliver of a smile hidden against the skin of his arm. “I should be going back by now,” he said, not moving an inch.

Neil’s voice was so low that Andrew couldn’t say if he was still awake of talking in his sleep. “Stay. Just a minute more.” He said, when he wanted to say _stay for a lifetime. stay until i’m gone._ _stay until the world ends_.

“A minute more,” Andrew said.

None of them started counting.

* * *

The idea of leaving someday, in the middle of the night, without saying even some measly goodbye to Andrew left a bitter taste in Neil’s mouth that persisted for long and seemingly endless days.

He never ever had someone to say goodbye to, before. It was just him and his mother, always close, always right beside each other in case they had to leave everything behind and run as fast as they could without a clear destination in mind. Neil was always the easiest to uproot—like a weed, he needed only a slight pull.

However, ever since this thing/nothing between Andrew and him started, he felt that his roots somehow comfortably nestled themselves in the soil under his feet, staking a claim to a place in a way did not think himself capable of. If he were to be truthful to himself, he would admit to noticing this even before Andrew first kissed him. It was that December in the Nest, the probability that he might never see any of the foxes again, that he might not hear anymore of Kevin’s complaints or Nicky’s jokes, that he might not be considered by Alisson as a lost case in the fashion department, or that Matt wouldn’t offer him a bite of his protein-filled cakes anymore, simply because he would no longer be there to refuse it.

He knew he should never have accepted Wymack’s offer, not if he had any love for his life the way it was (terrible, yes, but _alive_ ). But he put the ever present voice on his mother inside his conscience on standby, just for once, and ever since that day he dug himself deeper and deeper inside the foxes’ nest, and with each moment that passed he made it harder and harder to let himself go back to a life of running and hiding.

Neil didn’t want to feel scared anymore. Each of the foxes had to fight their own unforgiving demons. Neil wanted to fight his, too. Neil wanted to stay.

But could he, he wondered, fight and stay when every cell of his brain was wired to running at the slightest smell of danger? When his bones sang with the restlessness at staying somewhere for too long? And if (when) he left, would he be brave enough to tell Andrew goodbye, to break their promise, to leave, as he always did, without looking back?

Once, he could have answered these questions without thinking. Once, he could throw all his meager belongings on the backseat of whatever car his mother had managed to rent at the last minute and go away in a cloud of smoke, like a spell, like a mirage. Once—it was different now, he told himself. Now he had sort-of-friends, he had Kevin, to who Neil had given his game, he had Andrew, whose taste still lingered on his tongue, and he had a _chance_ , he knew, a chance to make things right, after 19 years cowering in fear. He had a chance to stay.

(but who was he fooling? he knew that as soon as his father got word about his whereabouts, he would be already halfway across the country, to nevada, nebraska, or hell, even alaska. he would leave without telling a soul where he went, not trusting anyone with a secret this heavy; he would be gone before the foxes noticed. his phone would be deep in the river before andrew left him the first of many messages.

because old habits die hard; and neil’s habits are not only habits, but the only way he has left to survive)

* * *

Neil never wondered why he liked to run the way he did.

Maybe it was about getting progressively away from everything clouding his head; maybe it was the feeling of blending with the other passersby, people busy with college and jobs and children and _life_ , in a sense of life that he‘d never felt: life as staying somewhere and taking roots and building a life, whereas for him staying alive was intrinsically related with not staying somewhere long enough to get attached; or maybe it was just the feeling of putting one foot in front of the other and letting his body do the job while his mind filled with white noise for a few blessed hours.

In the end, it didn’t matter much. All around him, unfamiliar faces went from place to place with such a hurry that for someone on the outside, it would seem the world was ending that very afternoon. Neil touched a hand to his forehead and wiped the sweat off his skin. How long since he’d left the Fox Tower? He couldn’t remember. The sun was barely visible on the horizon now. It must’ve been two hours ago, or even three. It was easy for him to lost track of time while he was running, to lose track of everything. He let himself sit in a wooden bench to take a little rest. Looking around, he quickly recognized the place where he was as one of the city squares closest to campus—and one which he was sure he’d already passed before, on this same day. Was he running in circles? He couldn’t know, but he wouldn’t put it past him either. These days, his brain seemed quick to turn tricks on him, focusing in all the things Neil wanted to forget.

The last message he’d received in his ancient flip phone said _5_. 5 days. But for what? The only thing happening in five days was their game against Binghamton Bearcats in New York, and Neil couldn’t for his life find something that related their next game and the string of messages he’d been receiving. For some time, he’d let himself believe that some Bearcats’ player had somehow gotten hold of his number and just got a little too worked up with their game, but it couldn’t be. Three texts started way before the match was defined, and in no way anyone believed Palmetto State would get as far as they did.

It was probably a mistake, someone who got the wrong number and still didn’t notice. Or just someone that wanted to piss him off. That seemed the most plausible theory, and even though now and then Neil found his thoughts drifting down to this subject again, trying to crack the mystery like an episode of whatever detective series Matt and Dan were always talking about. He had decided with himself that that was it—someone was trying to get on his nerves. No wild conspiracy theories in that. No mob families trying to take him to West Virginia again. No father coming up to finish the halfway job that started in Seattle.

Neil sighed. How much he would give to truly be Neil Josten, from Millport, Arizona, whose bigger problem was sometimes sleeping in his school’s locker room.

He was so engrossed in devanations that, at hearing the loud honking sound directly in front of him, he almost jumped from the seat. His first instinct was, of course, to run. But he stayed firmly in place, waiting, and two seconds later the windows of the black Maserati—which at that point he’d already recognized—rolled down to reveal the wheat-colored halo Neil could spot a hundred miles away.

Andrew gave him a quick look-over, not at all fazed by Neil’s disheveled state. “So here you are.”

“... Yeah?”

“Just get inside,” he said, rolling his eyes. Neil heard the click of the lock mechanism and went to the passenger’s side without questions.

The chilly air inside the car soothed his aching muscles like a balm, and Neil let himself rest his head against his seat, close his eyes and relax, just for a little while. Andrew didn’t say wherever he was taking him and Neil didn’t felt the need to ask. He was just a minute or two short of falling asleep when he felt the comforting humming of the motor going silent under his body. His eyes opened to see Andrew opening his door, like men did for the women they liked in the few rom coms Dan and Allison had convinced him to watch with them—it’s _culture,_ they said. Neil figured there was no problem in indulging them a little bit.

“Come on, junkie.” He went ahead, leaving Neil alone while he tried to understand what Andrew had planned. Following him, Neil climbed the three steps that led him to a glass door, and inside it, the smell of freshly brewed coffee filled his nostrils immediately. There was only one person on the other side of the counter, and five or six scattered by tables. The place was unremarkable, easy to overlook. Neil knew that add exactly why Andrew had chosen it.

Andrew sat in one of the tables farther away from the windows, hidden from the view of anyone outside the coffee. Neil sat across from him, a puzzled look on his face, but Andrew didn’t humour him. He’d ordered something as soon as he entered, and so they waited in silence until the waitress came to their table with a smile, served them both a glass of coke and left Andrew’s order of fries (medium-sized, with cheddar but no bacon) in between them.

Neil took one look at the fries and suppressed a laugh. “You found the only coffee shop in the city that is desperate enough to serve french fries.”

“Whatever,” he said, picking three at once. “It’s not like Kevin’s here to bitch about it.”

“And even if he was…”

Andrew pushed the fries closer to Neil’s side. “Eat it, junkie,” he said.

“I’m not hungry,” Neil said. But he was thirsty, so he gave his coke a long gulp, cold enough to give him brain freeze. Andrew didn’t seem fazed.

“You were running for two hours. It’s not about being hungry or not. You need to eat, so just do it before I find a way to shove these in your throat.” To stress his point, he pushed the food in Neil’s direction once again, leaving it almost at the edge of the table. Neil knew that if he refused again, Andrew would make it all go to the ground without remorse.

He picked one single fry and bit half of it. “Too much oil.”

“Eat the whole bucket then.” Andrew took a swig of his coke before attacking the fries again. “Maybe this way you won’t be so light to lift when we leave.”

Neil kept eating in silence, even pouring a bit of ketchup now and then, only if because Andrew always looked at him with approval whenever he did it. The fries were better than McDonald’s at least, which brought him memories on countless nights his mother and him spent in dingy places, eating cheeseburgers and french fries before driving till the sun started to shine on the next day.

He wanted to tell Andrew. The good memories and the bad ones—he wanted someone with who he could share them, someone that would listen without judging when he told them that the first night he had to sleep alone, knowing that his mother was dead and buried in a expanse of beach he would not be able to find anymore, he closed his eyes sure that he would wake up laying right next to her charred bones. The truth is that he couldn’t sleep at all.

So he stuffed himself full of fries to be quiet. To be _fine_.

The soft jingle that sounded each time the front door opened or closed took him out of his devanations. A man and a woman came inside, smiling to each other and holding hands. _A couple_ , he thought. They sat in the table closer to the window, laughing all the time, the man (Charles, he discovered, because they talked as loudly as they could without being bad-mannered) looking at the woman like she held within herself the solution to humanity’s greatest mysteries. Like she could wink and simultaneously end world hunger.

He didn’t knew much about romance — was this thing with Andrew a romance? — or dates — was this thing with Andrew a date? — but in some way, he didn’t felt like he was missing because of it. Maybe because Andrew wasn’t the type of person who required knowledge on all things romantic or not. With Andrew, he felt safe to go at whatever pace he felt comfortable going with (tortoise-like, now). And yeah, Andrew did _not_ look at him like he knew how to reverse climate change, but Neil didn’t want that. He wanted someone to look at him like he was a normal person (Neil Josten, Millport, Arizona), without tons of emotional baggage following him everywhere.

Was that a date? Andrew didn’t say, and Neil wouldn’t ask. But somehow it felt like it, even without a formal request and a serenade. Eating french fries, pouring ketchup on them, sipping his coke in between. That was all Neil wanted at that moment. No world-shaking ground-breaking encounters at five stars restaurants. In fact, he didn’t think he would ever want that.

“You’re good to go?” Andrew asked, a long time after Neil finished the last of the fries. It didn’t go unnoticed by him that, unlike before, Andrew didn’t just gave him an order ( _come on_ , or _eat it, junkie_ ) but instead, he _asked_ Neil.

_do you want to go? because we can stay, if you don’t. i can stay._

“Yeah,” he said. And no, he didn’t think that Andrew had the power to solve all the problems in the world—but he knew that, at least for a while, he could make Neil forget his own problems. And that, he thought, was more than enough. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

Zero days.

Neil didn’t think that anything was going to happen that night. Anything besides, of course, their win over the Bearcats. It was already painted on his mind, the image of it. After that, the USC Trojans, and then Riko and his ravens.

Just a month, and then the Foxes would be the champions. Just a month, and Riko’s self-proclaimed superiority over him — and most important, over Kevin — would be over. Just a month, and he would find himself something else to do, someplace to go. He’d already spent too much time at Palmetto State, more than he ever would’ve imagined in front of the press and its cameras. Someone would find out.

Someone _always_ found out.

Neil Josten would have to die, so another boy could be born in his place. But this time wouldn’t be like the others—Neil’s skin wouldn’t be so easy to shed as had been Stefan or Alex. Neil Josten was the closest to a real person Nathaniel Wesninski had ever become.

At least, Neil would be _remembered_. Even when he didn’t believe in himself, he could sleep knowing that somewhere, wherever Andrew and Nicky and Wymack and everyone went, they wouldn’t remember him as the Butcher’s son, but as a boy so focused on playing exy that nothing else in the world seem to matter. Not even his life.

Neil turned around to see Andrew in the seat after him, quietly sleeping with his head against the window, banging with every bump on the road. His new life could wait, just for a bit. First the Bearcats, then the Trojans, then the Ravens. One month. He still had one month as Neil Josten, and he pretended to make the best of it.

 _Let this mystery live a little longer_ , he thought, addressing his wish to all entities and no one at the same time. One more kiss, one more smoke shared at the roof. And then—

He wouldn’t think of that, not now. He promised Kevin his game, and they had a match to win.

* * *

(one month,

he thinks, laying down on the dirty floor of his old house baltimore, with his father above him, ready to slit his ankles off. _i thought i had one month_.

 _stupid boy_ , his mother would say.

nathaniel has no choice but to agree)

 


End file.
